I caught a bit of this last night on PBS. Thankfully, it's now online in full for anyone who has 90 minutes to watch a superb piece by one of the undisputed (and deserved) legends of American journalism.

This is one of those films that 25 years from now, people will be watching in college history and journalism classes when they study the Iraq War and how the Bush administration bamboozled the American people into it. But this movie is less about the American people as it is about the Washington Press corps and their utter failure to think critically and provide the information and ask the questions necessary to give the American people a fighting chance at understanding the truth.

Here is the link to the film on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html


Glenn Greenwald today in Slate:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press
It unapologetically identifies many of the guiltiest and most destructive wrongdoers in our government and the media.
Glenn Greenwald

Apr. 26, 2007 | (updated below - updated again)

If you didn't watch Bill Moyers' documentary last night regarding the joint, coordinated behavior of our government and its media in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I can't recommend it highly enough. You can watch it here.

For those who have been following these issues, there was no single, specific blockbuster revelation that was not previously known, although Moyers' focus on the superb (and largely ignored) pre-war work of Real Journalists at Knight-Ridder (now at McClatchy) does cast a new light on the profound malfeasance of our most influential media outlets. Most of all, the documentary very powerfully compiles some of the most incriminating facts, and it unapologetically identifies many of the guiltiest and most destructive wrongdoers in our government and in the press.

For that reason, the documentary is -- in one sense -- a very valuable historical account of the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions which deceived the country into the invasion of Iraq. But on another, more significant level, it illustrates the corruption that continues to propel our political and media culture.

One of the most important points came at the end. The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003. The people who committed the journalistic crimes Moyers so potently documents do not think they are guilty of anything -- ask them and they will tell you -- and as a result, they have not changed their behavior in the slightest.

Just consider that, as Moyers notes, there has been no examination by any television news network of the role played by the American media in enabling the Bush administration and its warmonger propagandists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. People like Eric Boehlert have written books about it, and Moyers has now produced a comprehensive PBS program documenting it. But the national media outlets themselves have virtually ignored this entire story -- arguably the most significant political story of the last decade -- because they do not think there is any story here at all.

The fraud that was manufactured by our government officials and endorsed by our media establishment is one of the great political crimes of the last many decades. Yet those who are responsible for it have not been held accountable in the slightest. Quite the contrary, their media prominence -- as Moyers demonstrates -- has only increased, as culpable propagandists and warmongers such as Charles Krauthammer (now of Time and The Washington Post), Bill Kristol (now of Time), Jonah Goldberg (now of The Los Angeles Times, Peter Beinert (now of Time and The Washington Post), and Tom Friedman (revered by media stars everywhere) have all seen their profiles enhanced greatly in our national media.

And while Judy Miller became the scapegoat for the media's failures, most of the media stars responsible for the worst journalistic abuses -- from Michael Gordon to Tim Russert to Fred Hiatt to most of The Washington Post, to say nothing of the Fox stars and cogs of the right-wing noise machine -- continue merrily along as before, with virtually no recognition of fault and no reduction in their platforms.

Moyers did a superb job of questioning both Tim Russert and Peter Beinart, and both were -- appropriately and enjoyably -- extremely defensive about their behavior. Beinart, along with his good friend and mirror image Jonah Goldberg, participated in one of the most vile -- though not all that unusual -- smear campaignsagainst a war opponent, Scott Ritter. The smear campaign was necessary precisely because Ritter was one of the very few individuals in this country who (completely unlike Goldberg, Beinart and all of the other faux warrior-experts parading across television screens loyally reciting the Bush line) actually knew what he was talking aboutwhen it came to the Iraqi weapons program and its "relationship" to Al Qaeda, and continuously warned (to little effect) about all of the warmongers' false claims about those topics.

But credit is at least due to both Russert and Beinart for appearing on Moyers' program and facing his appropriately confrontational questions. Their willingness to account for their conduct stands in stark contrast to the long list of cowards who still constantly strut around self-lovingly touting their own courage, resolve, Churchillian backbone, and all of their other little self-glorifying platitudes, yet were too afraid to face questioning from a real journalist about all of the fact-free, false propaganda they spewed for years (and continue to spew).

That disgraceful, dishonorable roster of Great Warriors hiding under their beds from Bill Moyers includes Fox's Krauthammer, Fox's Kristol, Fox's Roger Ailes, Bill Safire and Judith Miller. As The Washington Post's own Tom Shales put it:



People like Bill Kristol and Krauthammer will only go and sit with the likes of Brit Hume and speak only to Fox audiences, so they are never reminded of the literally countless falsehoods they churned out not only to justify the invasion but to profoundly mislead Americans for years about the ongoing occupation. And they both continue to issue one-way decrees from the pages of Time and The Washington Post, where they are never held to account for what they have done.

Moyers' documentary is a superb piece of journalism and makes inescapably clear how profoundly corrupt our dominant political and media institutions were prior to the invasion. But most national "journalists" will simply ignore the whole program (as Digby notes, The New York Times, one of the principal culprits, did not even review it).

They will almost certainly dismiss Moyers as a liberal partisan, not a real journalist, and continue to insist that they are doing a superb and even-handed job. They will continue to revere the most guilty parties responsible for the deceit and destruction of the last six years.

And, worst of all, the sicknesses documented so potently by Moyers will continue to pervade our dominant media and political institutions. Comparing 2002 and now, however, there is a significant difference: as Moyers' documentary illustrates, as does the emergence of political blogs, more and more people are increasingly recognizing how pervasive those deficiencies are, and consequently, are developing multiple alternatives to the rancid governing Beltway system.

UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow is one of those radical, unserious, untrustworthy extremist commentators who saw exactly what was going on back in 2002 and was right about virtually everything. As a result, Fred Hiatt and Richard Stengel will never invite him onto the Op-Ed pages of The Washington Post or Time alongside our Brilliant Foreign Policy Luminaries like Charles Kruathammer, Joe Lieberman and Robert Kagan, but -- to celebrate the four-year anniversary of our Glorious War -- he does have a small though rich samplingover at the Huffington Post of the great wisdom showered on us by Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and many of their other media and neoconservative friends.

UPDATE II: CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller watched Moyers' documentary and he is absolutely befuddled that anyone could possibly suggest that our White House Press Corps was insufficiently skeptical of the White House's pre-war claims or that they were too deferential to the Leader:



Really, what can one even say about this? Like most of his colleagues, he is drowning in total self-delusion. Note how he pretends to criticize White House journalists for being "irrascible and unlikable" -- the implication being that they are a really tough, ornery and contentious bunch of hard-core reporters who may not be likable or agreeable, but boy, they sure are feisty.

After describing (though understandably not quoting) several of the oh-so-super-tough questions he claims were asked at the pre-war Press Conference -- the one where reporters pretended to raise their hands in the hopes of being called upon, even though they knew Bush had a pre-scripted list of which reporters would be allowed to ask questions and they were only doing that to create a false perception of a free-wheeling press conference -- Knoller ends with these paragraphs:




I wonder if Knoller is aware that seven out of 10 Americans believed even six months after the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein personally planned the 9/11 attacks. But Knoller just cannot believe that anyone would suggest that the national press corps was too compliant.

This is the point I have realized only recently which I cannot stress enough. They really do not think they did anything wrong. They think that their pre-war "journalism" (which, they will admit with great humility, could "of course" -- like everything in the world -- have been better) was perfectly excellent journalism, and anyone who suggests otherwise simply does not understand the elevated role of journalists, and is probably just a lowly partisan hysteric.

That's how they think. Just go read Knoller's response to the Moyers' documentary. Our government deceived the entire country into a war based on a whole set of blatantly false claims -- all of which were shoveled into the public's minds by our nation's media outlets -- and they continue to say what a great job they did.

I Tom Tommorrow.

As much as it may suck I no longer expect the press to dig for the truth. Pretty much all news has become a compilation of open-ed pieces where opinion trumps fact. Given my expectations I do not hold the media responsible for the war or the public's response. Responsible people know that mainstream media is there for entertainment purposes only, it's not where you go for a well researched and documented information.

The only thing I expect of the media now is to maximize profit should I choose to invest in them.

Looks interesting. Has anyone watched any of the America at a Crossroads series? I have them all on the DVR but haven't seen them yet.

That's one of the major points of the doc.

I caught this last night, and it's really good. It's really nothing we didn't already know (if you're paying attention), however it does a fantastic job of putting everything in its proper context and summarizing everything that happened in regard to the press's role in the buildup to war.

Thing is we can talk all we want about the role of the press but the press only does what we want them to. We don't want them digging for the facts. The facts hurt and make us think. We all seem happier to read a newspaper or watch the news on tv that is really just an open-ed that agrees with our pre-formed opinions.

Part of it is the fallout of the "We can't fail you because you tried hard" philosophy in school. Now we see it in the news and how we relate to the news. We know we are right so we want a news source that agrees with us. And how do we know we're right, because we've been told so since day one of school. We will not put up with being told we're wrong anymore, that's not part of our philosophy.

Part of it is we all feel so detached from the government and feel no sense of empowerment that we may as well watch news that makes us feel good even if it's full of shit.

That's why I think this will be a "textbook" for future generations.

Bill Moyers is one of the most respectable human beings in the country right now. I've heard a few of his speeches which are floating around online somewhere.

On a side note about pundits (which is perhaps the lousiest media phenomenon ever), The Nation ran a great article about Chris Matthews' apparent obsession with the appearances of male politicians, particularly Republicans. Maybe I'll post it later.

Thanks for posting this. Great stuff. I remember watching that press conference during a course at Northeastern State University and being appalled that only about two people in the room had a problem with the suckfest they had just witnessed.

I didn't see this; certainly I'm going to make an effort to see it after reading all of those econmiums.

What I do notice in the discussion here is that most of the "journalists" thus far mentioned are actually pundits and op-ed writers and usually not associated with delivering "hard" news. (Judith Miller did do some rather crappy "hard" news stories).

I realize that the distinction is lost on a lot of the general public (this, of course, is the main problem with Foxnews). Certainly we could look back at the run-up to the war and find plenty of "journalists" with anti-war opinions. Had things worked out differently in Iraq, would it be possible to construct a documentary based on the "fervent anti-Americanism" in the press in the run-up to the war? Probably. Remember, folks, MSNBC gave quite a platform to virulently anti-war Phil Donahue before the Iraq invasion.

That being said, a discussion with Roger Ailes vis-a-vis this topic would be damn interesting, and would be getting more towards the crux of this "problem".
Point of fact, there was an editorial policy of virtual unconditional support of the war at Foxnews, and when your programming is mainly op-ed in nature you've got quite a propaganda machine on your hands.

I do watch Krauthammer and Kristol and Barnes on FNC with some bemusement these days, knowing how absolutely wrong they were on this issue. But the bottom line is, they are paid to offer their opinions, I tend to place a lot of blame on the viewer if he/she is unable to discern opinion from fact.

On the other hand, it might be hypocritical of me to give a lot more heed to what Pat Buchanan has to say these days, mainly because he has been 100% spot-on with his analysis of our Mesopotamian disaster from the start ( something tells me that ol' Bill probably didn't give ol' Pat any props).

The bottom line, folks, view your "news" sources with a critical eye, be informed enough to make a judgement on their credibility.

Donahue is in the piece. He says he was told he could never have, say, Scott Ritter on by himself, but he could always have Richard Perle on.

Most of the stuff you brought up is included, but from a slightly different angle. Basically, instead of viewers/readers confusing journalists and pundits, the news organizations themselves have done so. I mean, what happens when Bob Woodward or Judith Miller or any other supposed reporter makes most of their funds at speaking engagements, and in order to maximize those opportunities whore their faces out every night on Hardball or Wolf Blitzer or Hannity and Colmes?

Way to excuse the press and current administration of any guilt on this matter.

How am I excusing the current administration, I've never mentioned them. My point about the media is that it is a for profit business. If you want them to do hard hitting journalism then you better provide the profit motive and reward them when they do. We don't do that . I don't blame them for providing the pablum we love to suck back.

I took what you wrote as "we don't want real news, so the media is giving us what we want" and laying on the blame on the public.

so do i! he's usually in the village voice. it sucks those weeks he's not there

btw, moyers was bill maher's first guest on real time, hbo. great show this week!

The first 4 minutes during the press conference made me want to puke.

Watching the rest now.

Edit: The whole thing was outstanding. The interview w/ Jon Stewart was good too. Also linked on the site.

Friends,

I'll keep you updated as to when it will air, but I was just interviewed by the Bill Moyers' Journal producers for a segment on Thomas Paine. It'll be airing either this week or the next on the show. Pretty neat!

cool stuff